Important change: arrival of the Standard!

Important change: arrival of the Standard!

We made a series of interviews between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. These interviews persuaded us to complete a project we were thinking about for a long time: the setting up of a cards rotation system.

Right now there are 800 cards in the collection and it’s already too much for the game to run smoothly. The players who have all the cards always use the strongest of a clan and even if it makes them win matches they are frustrated not to see more variety. For their part, the beginners have to face a huge collection and they often feel quite lost.

We want to create a list that includes only characters released in the past two years (+ leaders and starter characters) and change several rooms which allow players to only use the characters in this list. We won’t impose this list in every rooms because our goal is not to stop you from playing the oldest cards, for example the DM T2 and Survivor T2 won’t change at all even if names will be different.

Let’s see what will happen in detail:

1/ Create a list of characters called «Standard» which will be updated every 6 months:
This list will contain Leaders, Starter Decks characters, all characters released within these last 2 years before the update (LD included) and characters which will be released after the update.
In practical terms it will give about ten characters allowed in each clan (with more or less the same number of characters in each level). Note that the new clans will keep all their characters. It will be taken into account in the cards releases planning. We will act as to give each clan what they need to be efficient.

3/ Finally, create or adapt battle rooms:
The Standard battle room : Standard Format with a DT every other hour.
Instead of opening a less than 26 stars (T1) room and a more than 26 stars (T2) one, you will have one single room BUT you’ll face opponents whose decks have a number of stars close to yours. This mechanism corresponds better to the reality of DTs today where every players try to find the good combination which will give the most points while winning matches with 20 to 30 stars decks. Merging the two rooms will allow you to keep this optimization spirit without the «artificial» side of the stars limitation. This flexibility combined with the Standard format will give a breath of fresh air to DTs while keeping specificity.

This room will be the ONLY DT room. There won’t be any T2, T1 or ELO Daily Tournament. We know that it’s not harmless and it was a very difficult decision to take. Some of you struggled a long time to obtain very expensive collectors which allow them to improve their results in DT and their disappointment is understandable. Nevertheless, DT’s today are clearly dominated by some decks not to say several highly efficient cards which is not healthy in a competitive game mode.

The ELO room: Standard format 25 (with potentially some bans), same rules except that there won’t be DTs in this room any more.
Use the Standard rules in the ELO mode sounds quite obvious to us. It will allow some regular changes to the mode and it will remove old characters which cause balancing problems. It should reduce the number of staff banned characters and no more characters banned by players.

About DT, we think that the ELO mode is pretty different from the DT. There is no reason to mix these two game modes. Today, ELO players have the opportunity to win free credits without playing in DT. Tomorrow they’ll have to choose between Dt and ELO which is already the case for players playing in other modes (Survivor or DM).

3 Deathmatch rooms:
Extended DM: Extended format, current DM rules.
Standard DM: Standard format, current DM rules.
Standard DM 25: Standard format 25, current DM rules.
The Extended DM will be equivalent to the current DM T2, only the name will change.
The Standard DM will allow players with big decks but with characters in the Standard list. The DM T1 will disappear and we’ll add a Standard 25 room. We noticed that the rare players in DM T1 were more ELO players than DT T1 players. We hope that the Standard DM 25 will be more used than the current DM T1 room. If it’s not the case, we will think about it. If there are DM T1 players here who are reading this message and don’t want this change to Standard DM 25, don’t hesitate to let us know.

"Will all the cards that are cycled out be made into CR's? They basically won't be playable anymore so what would the point be of being able to get them in packs?
So i also assume they will be removed from packs. That would really be the only logical thing to do."
Read the first format, there's still the extended mode for them. And if the systems pairs you based on your deck's star count the lowest stars still have a use. So no easy CRs for you.

@ Avenger - If I read the other forum right, it is liable to be in March, and then every 6 months. So, we'd be looking at every March & September.

@ Carnage - Cards cycled out are not usable in Standard, so I would GUESS they won't be in packs. However, I would not be surprised if UR offered different types of packs. Maybe New Blood will have fewer than 35 options. Maybe a Standard deck where you choose from 4 clans. Maybe an Extended deck where you choose from 6 clans, but are guaranteed older cards. I don't know. The important thing to remember is that what we think of as "the way things are" is now free to change. A lot. A different question could be: Will there ever be a need to make another card a Cr again?

@ RG - I hear you, brother. But, I would guess that anyone taking a break from UR would have access to "themed" decks, which (I would hope) would continue to be updated with "Standard" cards. of course, that's a lot of work for UR staff to constantly revise those themed decks, and ensure they are balanced for both power and market-value, but heck... That's for them to worry about, not us. ;-]

@ valguard - Sound logic. I'd say, drop Dr Ido an email (feedback@urban-rivals.com) asking for an Extended 25 format. Why not? It's just one more Custom Preset-style of coding, and not that hard to implement. And it could keep those older low-star cards valid. If you suggest it, you might be surprised at the answer. ;-]

@ Kingpin - I'm no market expert, I admit that. But it seems to me your Tessa can only increase in value, overall. Sure, there will be initial panic and confusion, but the supply of Tessa isn't going to increase, and let's be honest, the demand for Tessa has always been far more T2 than ELO, so you can expect that to continue in the Expanded modes. If you're more of an ELO kind of guy, I'm willing to guess you'll recoup your 600k on Tessa within a reasonably short timeframe. You may even find yourself making a tidy profit, too. (By the looks of the market, you could probably list her at 625,500k now, and make your cash back immediately, even after Kate's tax, thanks to your guild bonus.)

That's it for now. I'm glad folks are keeping a cool head about this. I've always thought we had one of the more insightful forums, less prone to drama and hysterics. I get the warm fuzzies seeing that re-affirmed here. ;-]

"This room will be the ONLY DT room. There won’t be any T2, T1 or ELO Daily Tournament. We know that it’s not harmless and it was a very difficult decision to take. Some of you struggled a long time to obtain very expensive collectors which allow them to improve their results in DT and their disappointment is understandable. Nevertheless, DT’s today are clearly dominated by some decks not to say several highly efficient cards which is not healthy in a competitive game mode."

Dont like this at all though ^
I have spent a whole lot of money on this game in order to obtain some of the better cards and now its being somewhat restricted. Unless I am reading this wrong? Someone explain this to me please.

I always think changes are nice. But, I think is just me, these changes seem make older clan less usable than the newer clan. And, it tends to limit diversity of decks.With older cards being excluded, the different type of deck you face will also be limited. So, in the long run it make the game a bit more predicable, which is not that great in my opinion. I like to play not knowing what kind of deck my next opponent is using. Once in a while, i'll run into someone using one of the "Big Five" cards like Guru Cr (which i dont own) in DT, thou i dont like playing against it but i do find joy in the challenge to fight against it.
I mean, I like the current format with both DT and elo, where overly powerful car are perm-elo banned and players get to vote every week which cards temp-ban. But, those banned card are still usable in DT.
This new system seem to favorite the newer players and it kind of force people to buy new cards/packs because their favorite clan/deck might have too many old cards. It kind of defeat the purpose of even buying the old cards, since you can only use it in Fight Club, which in my opinion is just training/pointless.
Someone, earlier have posted to keep both the old format and the new format; I agree with this. This way it allows the players to choose which format he/she would like to play. This way the newer player can play the new format, which is what the new format is seem to design for, while the older player can continue on in the old way.

I think that if you want Mono-Clan to work, every 6 months when you cycle out you'll need to create an additional "core" for each clan of 5 to 6 cards that might be older than 2 years, but stay in. After all, a 2 year cycle means you're only looking at a total card pool of 208 or so cards total, spread over 21 clans (more as you release more) meaning less than 10 cards per clan at the switch.

Considering you need 8 cards to even make a legal deck, I'm not sure how the gymnastics of making a mono-clan deck can possibly work, ESPECIALLY if you toss in the potential for ELO bans.

I agree that another problem is that there isn't a format that will allow you to earn credits using the older cards. Should I get too busy to play for a period of a few months in ELO or DT, then I'm essentially screwed as every 6 months another 52 cards will move out of the rotation PERMANENTLY.

I forsee a lot of of us playing in the legacy T2 formats in the future.

This is a great idea, except that it means some clans will be much more powerful, and will be the ones people wth full collections will use. That would be the new clans. Since the new clans are usually balanced and have NEW good cards, players using them would have better decks than if you used some other clans. This is because other clans do not recieve as many cards, and those cards are not always good.

@post 22
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL you're so funny. Why don't you do some reading first before, then give an opinion on why you feel that way? Just because they say it's for the greater good doesn't make it so. (for example, Lil' wayne does a song saying he's the best rapper alive. And then everybody believes it LOL. It's not even close to true).

@ post 25
They could, at the same time, their value would hardly ever go up. Because who would use them? At least now certain CRs bring favorable results in competitive play (LT, vickie, jackie in DTs, guru, general in DM). I guess this could just be an answer to price inflation xD, still not too hyped about the overall change.

Post 35 made me think about what I said in my first post. No, players will not stop supporting the game financially. They'll be ever so eager to buy the new cards to have some advantage in the new standard format (overpriced cards for everyone else; they can get them by whipping out their credit card. whoo!)